CAREFUL
be careful
what you
do with
how you read
how you treat
this poem
avoid all risk of
contamination
shield
with tin foil
or with
concrete shell
containing
a lead-
lined box
the energy at the heart
of this poem
simply following
Einstein’s
equation
could split your
every atom
radiate
the Hell out of
you
INTEGRITY
you are a voice
you proclaim it
to be so
standing before an
empty canvas
staring
into space
I read the guide
it tells me
the title of
this piece
is, if I read
it right, “Whatever”
I would like to smirk
but fear aesthetes
might stone me
missed that semester course
on dead surrealism
was spending
much of that time
feeling and
looking vacant
imagining a world where
there was no Spanish Civil War
ergo
no International Brigade
no Picasso Guernica
maybe the Universe sometimes
takes poetic license
could it be
that we are all long-passed
and this is all a De Chirico,
Dali-esque forever recycled
state
of dreaming?
who knows how to
find the truth, get
to the bottom
of this matter
what is it with truth
anyway?
always looks
feels so suspect
as is the case with all these
either-or binaries
damned if you do
damned if you don’t
see you added your own little
postscript to that non-painting
destroying
its artistic integrity
Sent from my iPhone
CONSTELLATION
assuming the feral position
in the loadshed dark
on my bed
with a dying cat
my
beautiful dying cat
I cannot wait for two
weeks to pass and I hit
what just has to be
my final birthday
don’t give me
rebirth
I would be
kicking and screaming against
the very thought
of consciousness
possibility
of coming back
not to be u grateful
not to disrespect life, that
sacred most
magical
of things
but thanks but
no thanks
leave me be for that trillion years
until the Universe is a dead weight
of iron and
burnt out coal
and the last civilizations who had
their faith who had their dream
are
long long gone
maybe
like us they had their astrology
astronomy cosmology
their genius mettle.
born under
the constellation
which loosely
translates as the dying cat
TELEGRAM
I got the telegram
from Bergman’s gloomy
chess player
before I could
chisel any kind of epitaph
even a self-effacing joke one
the chisel was blunt anyway
and I have no skill
in this matter
and my Latin
and French are so weak
no hope there of going out
with an epigram
strident
or mellifluous
no, I guess
they need to find
a better home for
such fine
unmarked stone.
BRIEFING
I gave a briefing
to the creatures
from Wonderland
lest they wrongly
assume our
Alice-rational world
be opposite
in the extreme
for disappearing cats
and talking caterpillars
might here
be a real rarity
we do have
skies full of zinging
tic tacs
bouncing around
at Mach Twenty-three
yes things interdimensional
or extraterrestrial
craft manned and drone
with who
knows what superior
artificial intelligence and
advanced personnel
technologies which
make us look
like we barely out
of the Stone Age
I wonder what
fantastic, Wonderlands rich
in characters
these brilliant beings
and their magical technologies
are not
able to create to
amuse their
ancient selves.
BREATH
the goddess dances
and even though
it is only the few
the precious few
watch her dance in a place
that is neither Heaven nor
Mount Olympus
it is as if the whole
Universe has stopped
for a moment
to take
its breath
OPAL
her soul
be an opal
every shift and
change does she
then scry
Oh this landscape changes
as crazily but not quite with
the speed
of kaleidoscope patterns
every
mirror playing its part
in this mandala
of a mosaic
And I watch through smoky glass
or crystal
to save my eyes from the
ferocity of eclipse
things so clear once, but
now we guess that clarity
came at the price of
intransigence, the need
for that which
could not
survive exposure
to be parked, obscured,
in some
instances simply hidden
once we
gave ourselves the licence
to call out such practice, challenge
those assumption,
mock and ridicule and
turn the overwrought symbolism
into brute carnival
once we loved
that licence, rebelled in it
but
as she says
as she says
we are not
allowed to read the world this way, see
what we did see
the fiction is
steeped in the so-called
refinement of all Technicolor
SUPERPOSITION
I am your
local, friendly
quantum
mechanic
here to fix
your
robotic
companion
no
ulterior motive
no
judgements cast
will just
Turing Test him/
her/it
take it through all its
algorithms
its binary times tables
soon you will be talking
like two telepaths
perfect synchrony serendipity
and fits-like-a-glove
superposition.
EDGE
I have seen
enough
Black Mirror
not to swoon over any idea
of cutting edge
dystopia puts a different spin
on everything
blades whirring blending
liquidizing
making
everything the same
PIE
“a piece of pie”
2010: The Year We Make Contact
A piece of pie this monolith is
the cosmonaut said, unaware
how he was caught or
framed by
HAL’s beady eye (I say
“HAL” but you know
I must be alluding
to his Russian equivalent)
the monolith such
an iconic object by now
in all technologically advanced
civilizations
giving us the smarts to
nuke the entire
planet in
defence of our waterhole
and all on that hill
we havd sworn to die on
no the monolith though
teeming with stars looks
like a thick sheet of rolled steel
block of
planed wood
so much in our culture (ask
HAL!) revolving around
the battle
between steel
and wood.
poems 2 die for